


Clean

by draculard



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Bloodline - Claudia Gray, Star Wars: Resistance Reborn - Rebecca Roanhorse
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Bathing/Washing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mutual Pining, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22818289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: "Senator," he greets her."General," Leia corrects him.
Relationships: Ransolm Casterfo/Leia Organa
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	Clean

There’s coal dust clinging to his skin and clothes and his curly hair has almost completely turned white, but Leia recognizes him right away. They can put Ransolm Casterfo in rags and they can try to work him to death, but they can’t get rid of that defiant spark in his eye. 

He’s not humiliated when he leaves the ship with the rest of the freed prisoners. His head is held high. His gaze is sharp.

And then his eyes meet hers, and neither of them really smiles, but it’s still there.

For the first time since Ben destroyed the Temple — for the first time since Han left — Leia feels like she’s home.

* * *

“Senator,” he greets her.

“General,” Leia corrects him. There it is again — that tightening of his lips, that almost-smile, that satisfied gleam of approval in his eyes. His shoulders are tense, she can tell. He wants to fight.

She knows the feeling. If she concentrates, she can feel all kinds of familiar things roiling about inside his mind. His brain is laid out the same way hers is, scientific and methodical, the thoughts folding into each other in an orderly procession. All of this is tinted by a hundred different stings, some good, some bad.

The joy of freedom. The lightness of unshackled wrists and ankles. Outrage boiling directly underneath, eagerness to get started, the friction of energy rushing back and forth inside his veins. Impatience, longing.

Loneliness.

It’s like looking into her own mind.

* * *

She doesn’t have time to see to prisoners personally, of course, but no one calls her on it. Perhaps no one even notices she’s making an exception, but she doubts it. Poe, certainly, will know; she can feel his eyes tracking her, hooded and thoughtful as ever.

She places a hand on the small of Ransolm’s back, leads him to the spacious tent she’s made into her work and living space.

She pretends not to feel him flinch when she touches him.

* * *

She doesn’t presume, of course. How many years has it been since she’s seen Ransolm? It all blends together, the assassination and the bombing melding together with the feeling of his waist beneath her hands when he “rescued” her on the speeder. The holo-calls to Ben, unanswered, evoke the same feeling she had when she stood before the Senate and heard her name spoken aloud in conjunction with “Darth Vader.”

It all happened so fast back then.

Why is everything now moving so slow?

“We’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” Leia says inside the tent, and she forces herself to smile. She watches Ransolm’s dark eyes, his gaze twitching from one thing to the next. From the datafiles open on Leia’s holodisplay — an implicit statement of trust, that she leaves them open — to the exposed pipes of a makeshift water system to the neatly-made cot in the corner.

“Well, take a seat,” Leia says, and deliberately, she turns away. She busies herself with the water system, and Ransolm moves so quietly that she only knows he’s taken her desk chair because she can  _ feel _ it, the same way she could feel where Luke was on Cloud City all those years ago.

She warms the water slowly, drawing it over a soft square of cloth, and watches the moisture sink into it. When she turns back to Ransolm, his posture is erect and his hands are laid out flat on his thighs.

His eyes are squeezed shut.

He doesn’t open them even when Leia presses the warm cloth gently to his cheek and wipes the dust away.

* * *

She drags the cloth over his face and when he’s clean, she moves it up to his hair, absorbing as much of the dirt and blood caked there as she can. His head bows; she cannot see his face, but she can see the tension in his shoulders spiking and fading, can see the utter stillness of his chest as he tries not to breathe.

She rinses the cloth clean.

She starts again. When she runs the cloth over his ear, Ransolm shudders. When she brushes her thumb over his eyelashes — still dark, still long, still captivating — he goes still.

The cloth is resting on his neck now, Leia’s hand pressed over it, not moving. She can see the edge of an old scar beneath it. They haven’t seen each other in so long that he’s got new scars she’s never seen before, and already they’re old. Wounds felt long ago. Wounds long-healed.

He opens his eyes. Leia looks at him and finds her own dark, tired eyes staring back.

“All clean,” she whispers, and takes the cloth away. 


End file.
